Southern California -- this just in

Andrew Breitbart: Coroner's probe may wrap up in weeks

April 20, 2012 | 6:50
pm

The Los Angeles County coroner's office could close the books on conservative commentator and editor Andrew Breitbart's death within weeks, after concluding that he died of heart failure and hardening of the arteries.

The finding matched earlier statements by both officials and Breitbart's family that he died suddenly and of natural causes near his home.

The office ruled that the cause of Breitbart's death was heart failure and hypertropic cardiomyopathy with focal coronary atherosclerosis, or hardening of the arteries.

Coroner's officials deemed the death "natural," and toxicology tests detected no illicit drugs in Breitbart's system.

"No significant trauma was present and foul play is not suspected," the coroner's office said in a statement. "It is anticipated that the final Coroner report will be available for release within two weeks."

Breitbart's father-in-law, actor Orson Bean, told The Times, "He was walking near the house somewhere.... He was taken by paramedics to UCLA, and they couldn't revive him."

Breitbart spent his early professional life helping edit the Drudge Report and later helped launch the Huffington Post. In 2005 he started his own news aggregation site, Breitbart.com, which was designed to counter what he described as the "bully media cabal" that he said ignored stories at odds with prevailing liberal orthodoxy.

His goal, he often said, was to "destroy the institutional left."

His big splash came in 2009, when he posted an undercover video in which a pair of conservative activists posing as a prostitute and her boyfriend asked employees of the community group ACORN for help with a brothel that would house underage Salvadorans. ACORN was embarrassed when some of its workers seemed too helpful; Congress responded by defunding the organization.

Breitbart's mother-in-law, Alison Mills Bean, called Breitbart "one of the most genuine people I’ve met in my life.... He always spoke the truth of his heart and no matter what people agreed or disagreed with him he never wavered.

Breitbart is survived by his wife, four children, a sister and his parents, Jerry and Arlene.